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Comment by thorum | Hacker News Reader

> The historian Yuval Noah Harari has argued that humans should figure out how to work together and establish trust before developing advanced AI. In theory, I agree. If I had a magic button that could slow this whole thing down for 30 or 40 years while humanity figures out trust and common goals, I might press it. But that button doesn’t exist. These technologies will be created regardless of what any individual or company does.

Is that true, though? Training runs for frontier models don’t happen without enormous resources and support. You don’t run one in your garage. It doesn’t happen unless people make it happen.

Is this really a harder coordination problem than, say, stopping climate change, which Gates does believe is worth trying?

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Climate change is the byproduct of the desired outcome, energy. Advanced AI, if you buy Yuval's argument is the threat in and of itself.

So Climate Change is a problem that can be 'solved' while the main goal is pursued. This is ideologically consistent with gates investment in terrapower. Where as AI isn't because the desired outcome is the threat not a bi-product.

So your questions a bit flawed fundamentally.

As for gate's point is it true, almost certainly yes, the game theory is peruse and lie that you aren't, or openly pursue. You can't ever not pursue because you do not and cannot have perfect information.

Imagine how much visibility china would demand from the US to trust it was doing nothing, far more than they could give, and vice versa.

Do you think the us is going to give its adversaries tracking and production information its most advanced chips? It would never, and if they did why would other powers trust it if theres every reason to lie.

Climate change is the byproduct of the desired outcome, energy. Advanced AI, if you buy Yuval's argument is the threat in and of itself.

That's just a matter of how you slice your concepts. You could say burning oil is a threat in and off itself, for example. Or oppositely, "the threat of bad AI" is a byproduct of "useful AI".

So Climate Change is a problem that can be 'solved' while the main goal is pursued.

I don't think many people trying to solve climate change are trying to end industrial society. They are trying to find an energy source that doesn't produce Co2 pollution.

Sam Altman convincing the ultra-rich that AI is the next best place to put their too much money after they've run out of other places to put it is not anywhere near the spirit of what he meant by people "working together." He's saying that while in a dysfunctional society, AI will only magnify the dysfunction.

Fighting climate change is a means towards the end of having a livable environment, developing AI is a means towards the end of having a better society. But, whereas fixing the environment would be its own automatic benefit, having AGI would not automatically improve the world. Something as seemingly innocuous and positive as social networking made a lot of things worse.

> > developing AI is a means towards the end of having a better society

A better society and a better world in general encompasses beating climate change thanks to AI.

Many smart people are also moving from climate change research to AI because the latter is seen as something meta that can help with everything and thus higher grade or worth pursuing more than individual problems like solving climate change or defeating cancer.

We'll see if they are right, they were wrong before and specifically during the long AI winter

This rings true. The internet exposed the dysfunctional wealth inequality (look at all the billionaires it created) , social networks exposed the dysfunctional human communications and manipulation (ie Jan 6 was a love fest) , and now AI will just take both of those to the next level. Extreme wealth, extreme poverty and mass manipulation of people

If anybody things AI will cure cancer or something grandiose like that they are propping up their stock portfolio.

AI will be the harbinger of the last wave of human growth before we all end up killing each other over the price of eggs or whatever else AI regurgitation machine decides

AI research is global and of strategic value with both the US and China competing. I don't see one stopping research while the other cracks ahead. Similar problems exist with curbing co2 which hasn't gone very well to date.

Genuinely asking, are we still trying to "stop" the climate change any more or are we in the "easing the incoming pain" phase already?

We have a PhD student ecologist in the family and they've lost all hope. It's quite depressing. Doesn't look like the next round of world governments have it high on the agenda also.

Isn’t it sad , that our government and companies quickly solved AI energy problems by bootstrapping Nuclear again, but in 30 years can’t make a single unified decision on anything else

It'll be ironic if AI solves climate change by just existing, i.e. by giving the world a compelling reason to stop hiding behind austerity and anti-growth bullshit rhetoric, and to double down on energy production instead, thus forcing us to tackle the "how do we do it without cooking ourselves" problem up front, since it cannot be deferred.

It won’t start moving until the boomer generation are out, I think. Let’s just hope we can do better when it’s our turn I guess.

Powerful, and wealthy in particular, people are more interested in the latter than the former. When vast wealth is built off of maintaining the status-quo there is very little incentive for implementing changes that threaten the status-quo "organically."

I get hope when I read this essay from Harpers [0]. But I actually think it will be more like Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Water Knife" [1].

[0]: https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/prayer-for-a-just-war-fi...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife

do you mean stop as in reverse the trend by limiting bad behavior or do you mean stop like climate engineering. there is always the option to use science to modify the climate on purpose.

Let's face it. Our world is currently filled with rogue states waging pointless wars, spying on their own citizens, launching cyberattacks, seeding disinformation outside their borders, etc. If they want to make it happen they will. It is a damn hard coordination problem.

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